This behaviour sounds perfectly reasonable for the common case, for whom it was designed.
Furthermore it sounds like this guy is using Time Machine as an archiving solution, not a backup solution. You shouldn't be all that worried to lose backups a year old if you know newer ones are intact. You should never delete a document there's any chance of ever needing again, then rely on TM or similar to save it for you.
I'm not worried about losing the old backups. But I would be worried about losing all of my backups, which is what would have happened if I had not noticed what was happening and stopped it manually.
Furthermore it sounds like this guy is using Time Machine as an archiving solution, not a backup solution. You shouldn't be all that worried to lose backups a year old if you know newer ones are intact. You should never delete a document there's any chance of ever needing again, then rely on TM or similar to save it for you.